Manufactured Prosperity

What is Money?
As important as money is to most people, most of us take for granted
this valuable resource without giving thought to what it really is,
where it comes from, or how it works. We earn it, we spend it, we
save it, and some may complain they don't have enough of it, but few
really know much about it. For most people, money, finances,
monetary policy, etc. are pretty confusing and as a result they figure
leaving the subject to others.

Many assume the bills stuffed in their wallet is money. But, is it?

Throughout history, money has taken on many forms and there hasn't
been much agreement on what "object" money is. It really is nothing
more than a symbol that represents the value of something. For those
of us who use the Bible as our foundation, it's interesting to note that
throughout Scripture silver and money are pretty much synonymous. The Hebrew term that
means "silver" is found 403 times in the Old Testament, and depending upon the context, the
KJV translators translated it into either silver or money 399 times. In essence, silver and
money were the same idea, the same concept, the same thing, as it were.

Whatever form it takes, it is used as an intermediary for trade - or medium of exchange, in

order to avoid the inefficiencies of a barter system.

Money is generally considered to have the following four characteristics: (1) a medium, (2) a
measure, (3) a standard, and (4) a store. That is, money functions as a medium of exchange, a
unit of account, a standard of payment, and a store of value.

The Bible tells us, "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6). Having
knowledge combined with wisdom, on the other hand, can empower you with tools for
survival and provide you greater prosperity. This is why knowledge about the true nature of
money has been withheld from you. Not only are you ultimately destroyed from lack of
knowledge but you are also manipulated by those who do have the knowledge and control of
money.

Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this article, you will have more knowledge about
money and begin to experience more of the benefits it can bring. Particularly, this article is
going to explore the devolution of our Biblical form of money in America as established in
the U.S. Constitution, how it has lost most of the above characteristics, how it is presently
being used to destroy us as a people, and what we can do to restore it.

Types of Money
Money is a broad term that has come to refer to any financial instrument that can fulfill the
above four functions of money. Money can further be described among different types of
monetary aggregates, using a categorization system that focuses on the liquidity of the
financial instrument used as money.
 • A commodity money is a medium of exchange the units of which are fixed amounts of an
actual commodity that has value other than as money alone. Many items have been used as
commodity money such as conch shells, barley, beads etc., as well as many other things
that are thought of as having value. Historically, silver and gold coins of known, standard
weights and designs have emerged as the preferred commodity monies of the entire
civilized world. Gold and silver have been used as money throughout most of recorded
history, even as far back as Abraham [Genesis 23:12-16]. In the case of a commodity money,
the actual commodity - silver or gold - is both the medium of exchange and the standard of
value (that is, the unit in which prices are stated in the marketplace).

• A fiduciary money (or representative money) is a medium of exchange composed of some

intrinsically valueless substance (such as paper) which the issuer promises to redeem on
demand in a commodity money (such as silver or gold coin) or in a monetary commodity
(such as silver or gold bullion). The paper promise to pay is the medium of day-to-day
exchange, but the actual money and the ultimate standard of value remains the promised
medium of payment, the silver or gold coin with which the note is to be redeemed.

• A fiat money is a medium of exchange composed of some intrinsically valueless substance

which the issuer does not promise to redeem in a commodity or a fiduciary money. The
money itself is given value by government fiat (Latin for "let it be done") or decree.
Because a fiat money has no direct legal connection to a commodity money (in terms of
redemption) and, therefore, no real economic cost to its production, the supply of a fiat
money can never be self-limiting; and the value of a fiat money is always largely a matter
of public confidence in the economic or political stability of the issuer. For these reasons,
historically every major fiat money have self-destructed in what is popularly called
"hyperinflation" (that is, extreme decreases in purchasing-power) caused by either
unlimited increases in the supply of that fiat money by the issuer or accelerating loss of
public confidence in the continued value of the money or the economic or political fortunes
of its issuer, or both.

Constitutional Money
America was founded amidst one of the largest economic crises we've experienced. There
was raging inflation along with a massive depression that had followed the emission of bills
of credit and other forms of paper currency issued by the Continental Congress and many of
the state legislatures. The founding fathers recognized their responsibility of putting these
paper monies into circulation and took actions to prevent this from ever happening again.

The founders of American independence also intimately understood the tyranny imposed by
those who control and manipulate the money and went to great lengths to ensure America
would never again be enslaved to the moneyed vultures again who desire to set themselves
above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.

In writing the Constitution, they included the monetary powers of this new nation and
outlawed what James Madison in the Federalist papers denounced as "the fallacious medium
and improper and wicked project of paper money".

The Congress shall have power... To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign
coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; - U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 8,
Clause 5

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and
Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender
in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the
Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.- U.S. Constitution Article I, Section
10, Clause 1

The U.S. Constitution established commodity money as the only lawful medium of
exchange in America and empowered Congress to coin silver and gold coins the values of
which are to be "regulated" using a fixed standard of weights and measures. The value of the
US dollar represented a certain equivalent weight in silver and could be redeemed in silver
coins. The Constitution did not authorize printing paper money (Bills of Credit). Only gold
and silver coins were considered legal tender as a standard of payment.

The Coinage Act enacted in Congress in 1792 fixed the monetary unit of the United States as
the silver "dollar" and defined the dollar as a unit of measure of 371.25 grains of pure silver
or 416 grains of standard silver. The U.S. had adopted the decimal system [dollars and cents]
for measuring the weight of money rather than the Avoir du pois, [Troy or 'shekel'] used
elsewhere. As a measurement, the U.S. dollar consisted of 100 equal cents, or ten dimes to a
dollar, or 4 quarters to a dollar. All of the minor coins were defined in terms of percentages of
the primary coin the dollar such that a half dollar contained 1/2 as much silver as a dollar,
quarter dollars, 1/4th etc.

Dollar Half Dollar Quarter Dime

416 grains 208 grains 104 grains 41 3/5 grains

Most people today consider the dollar a tangible thing, rather than a 'dollar' unit of WEIGHT
MEASURE. Just as concrete is denominated [or expressed] in cubic yards and milk is
measured in quarts, so too silver and gold were expressed/weighed in dollars. There is,
therefore, no such 'thing' as a concrete cubic yard, a milk quart, or a silver [gold] 'dollar'.
There is, on the other hand, a cubic yard of concrete, a quart of milk, and a dollar of silver or
gold.

Ever since establishing a sound monetary system in the Constitution and further guaranteeing
American citizens life, liberty, and property in the Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth
Amendments, there has been a struggle between the ungodly power of the elitist bankers and
those who choose liberty. That struggle can be characterized as the debauchery - or corruption
- of the monetary system in America and throughout the world from commodity money, to
fiduciary money, and to ultimately fiat money.

U.S. Central Bank

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, made a deal to support the
transfer of the capital from Philadelphia to the banks of the Potomac in exchange for southern
support for his Bank project. As a result, the First Bank of the United States was chartered by
Congress in that same year. The First Bank of the United States was modeled after the Bank
of England, partly owned by foreigners, who would share from its profits. The Bank was
bitterly opposed by several founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison, who saw it as an engine for speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the
banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive
the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the
continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from
the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -
Thomas Jefferson

Public outrage over the abuses of the First Bank of the United States, including its practice of
fractional lending at a 10:1 rate (ten dollars of loans for each dollar they had on deposit) was
such that its charter was not renewed and the bank ceased to exist in 1811.

The war of 1812 again left the country in economic chaos, putting the United States in
significant debt. This debt led to an increase in banknotes among new private banks, and as a
result, inflation increased greatly. Seeing another opportunity for easy profits for bankers, the
Second Bank of the United States, chartered in 1816 was founded out of desperation to
stabilize the currency by President James Madison.

The Bank aided a real estate boom through its 10:1 fractional lending, which encouraged
speculation in land. This lending allowed almost anyone to borrow money and speculate in
land, sometimes doubling or even tripling the prices of land. With such a boom, hardly
anyone noticed the widespread fraud occurring at the Bank as well as the economic bubble
that had been created. In the summer of 1818, the national bank managers realized the bank's
massive over-extension, and instituted a policy of contraction and the calling in of loans. This
recalling of loans simultaneously curtailed land sales and slowed the U.S. production boom
resulting in the Panic of 1819.

The Second Bank of the United States had thrived from the tax revenue that the federal
government regularly deposited and served as the depository for Federal funds until 1833,
when President Andrew Jackson instructed his Secretaries of the Treasury to cease depositing
the funds. Jackson saw the bank as an instrument of political corruption and a threat to
American liberties. In Jackson's veto message, the bank needed to be abolished because:

• It concentrated the nation's financial strength in a single institution.

• It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.
• It served mainly to make the rich richer.
• It exercised too much control over members of Congress.
• It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.

The Central Bank's money-lending functions were taken over by the legions of local and state
banks that sprang up, leading to an expansion of credit and speculation. At first, as Jackson
withdrew money from the Bank to invest it in other banks, land sales, canal construction,
cotton production, and manufacturing boomed. However, due to the practice of banks issuing
paper banknotes that were not backed by gold or silver reserves, there was soon rapid
inflation and mounting state debts.

At one time in the 19th Century, there were more than 5000 different types of bank notes
issued by various commercial banks in America. Only the notes issued by the largest, most
creditworthy banks were widely accepted. The script of smaller, lesser known institutions
circulated locally. Farther from home it was only accepted at a discounted rate, if it was
accepted at all. These banknotes could be converted into gold or silver by application at the
bank. Since banks issued notes far in excess of the gold and silver they kept on deposit,
sudden loss of public confidence in a bank could precipitate mass redemption of banknotes
and result in ‘’bankruptcy’’.

On January 8, 1835 withdrew all government funds from the Second Bank of the United
States using it to pay off the national debt. Then, in 1836, Jackson issued the Specie Circular,
which required buyers of government lands to pay in gold or silver coins. The result was a
great demand for gold and silver, which many banks did not have enough of to exchange for
their notes. These banks collapsed, and was a direct cause of the Panic of 1837, which threw
the national economy into a deep depression.

Debasing the Currency

Debasement is the practice of lowering the value of currency. A coin is said to be debased if
the quantity of gold, silver, copper or nickel is reduced. Debasement occurred when
unscrupulous users shaved off small amounts from the edges of the coins, thereby reducing
the actual silver content of the coin. In order to prevent this, silver and gold coins began to be
produced with milled edges. The main reason a government will debase its currency is
financial gain. By reducing the silver or gold content of a coin, a government can make more
coins out of a given amount of specie.

The consequence of debasing the currency will inevitably be ever-increasing prices

(inflation), which is simply the market’s way of saying that the currency is falling in value in
comparison with everything else. The advantage to public officials of debasing its currency is
that the masses usually have no idea that government is behind the rising prices and so join
the government’s chorus blaming the rising prices on rapacious businessmen, profiteers, and
speculators.

"Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the

existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages
all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it
in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John
Maynard Keynes

In less than 50 years of establishing the dollar as the currency of the

United States, the debasement began. In an act passed on January
18, 1837 the alloy was changed to 90% pure and 10% alloy thus having the effect of
containing the same amount of silver but being reduced in weight from 416 grains to 412.25
grains of standard silver. Seated Liberty Dollars were introduced in 1840 and contained 90%
silver, 10% copper with its silver content of 0.77344 troy oz.

Sixteen years later, on February 21, 1853 the Constitutional mandate of fixing the standard of
weights and measures (U.S. Constitution Article I, Section 8, Clause 5) was abandoned when
the amount of silver in the fractional coins was reduced so that it was no longer possible to
combine the fractional coins to come up with the same amount of silver that was in the dollar.

Paper Money
The system of gold and silver backed money
evolved into a system of fiduciary money -
or representative money - as banks would
issue a paper receipt to their depositors,
indicating that the receipt was redeemable
for whatever precious goods were being
stored. This system was much more
convenient than lugging around gold and
silver and was widely accepted because everyone knew the paper receipts were "as good as
gold". Ther paper was not the dollar, instead, it is 'worth', not 'is', 1 dollar (as in the U.S Silver
certificate.)

Abraham Lincoln battled for the right of Congress and the Treasury to hold the awesome
power of coining money. He knew that to surrender this power to private banks was
ultimately to surrender the sovereignty of America. The use of bank notes issued by private
commercial banks as legal tender was gradually replaced by the issuance of bank notes
authorized and controlled by the national government.

Legal Tender
Legal tender or forced tender is payment that, by law, cannot be refused in settlement of a
debt.

During the American Civil War, the federal government was unable to pay its debts with gold
or silver coin, so began to issue paper notes to pay its debts. In
1862, Lincoln issued fiat paper money known as Greenbacks,
without the backing of precious metals. When people refused to
accept them in payment, Congress adopted the Legal Tender
Act of 1862, compelling them to do so, and thus began
circulating the first national United States currency. These bills of credit were known as Legal
Tender Notes because of the inscription on each obverse face stating "This Note is a Legal
Tender."

Remember, the U.S. Constitution prohibits any government from issuing what the Founding
Fathers called "Bills of Credit" (and what we today would understand as paper currency
redeemable in silver or gold), and outlaws any form of "legal tender" except silver and gold
coins.

Art. I Sec. 10 Cl. 1, states, in part: "No State shall ... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make
any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; ..."

This departure from the Constitution resulted in just as Frederic Bastiat predicted...

"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code
that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat in "The Law"

In 1868 the Supreme Court unanimously said that nothing other than coined money had been
recognized by the legislation of the national government as lawful money. (Bank vs. Supervisors,
7 Wallace, p. 30.) In Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), the Supreme Court found the acts creating the
greenbacks to be unconstitutional, ruling that forcing a creditor to accept payment in inflated
currency was a violation of the 5th Amendment, protection of property under due process.
That decision was later reversed following the appointment of two new judges by President
Ulysses S Grant.

The Gold Standard

Following the Civil War, Congress recalled the Greenbacks from circulation and re-
authorized the minting of silver and gold Dollars. The "Coinage Act of 1873" placed the
United States on the gold standard, which replaced the bimetallic (silver and gold) standard
that had been created by Alexander Hamilton. Many saw this as a "crime," and on February
28, 1878 the Bland-Allison Act was passed by Congress requiring the United States Treasury
to purchase between $2 million and $4 million of silver bullion from mining companies in the
West, to be minted into coins that would be legal tender for all debts, like gold.

Like the earlier Seated Liberty Dollars, the Morgan Dollar also
contained 90% silver, 10% copper with its silver content of 0.77344
troy oz. The dollar was continuously minted from 1878 until 1904
when the supply of dollars in circulation was high and there was an
shortage of silver bullion. Then in 1918, the Pittman Act called for
over 270 million coins to be melted for silver content. In 1921, the
coinage of the Morgan Dollar resumed for that year and was
replaced by the Peace Dollar commemorative that would become
standard issue.

These coins, however, were quite heavy, so the government

applied their gold certificate strategy to the silver. Suppose
that there were five silver dollars in the treasury. The
government would print a $5 Silver Certificate against the
dollars, providing a somewhat easier medium of exchange.

The classic gold standard prevailed during the period 1880 and 1913 when a core of leading
trading nations agreed to adhere to a fixed gold price and continuous convertibility for their
currencies. The gold standard was only a system for exchange of value between national
currencies, never an agreement to redeem all paper notes for gold. Gold was used to settle
accounts between nations.

The Federal Reserve System

Early in 1907, New York Times Annual Financial Review published Paul Warburg's (a
partner of Kuhn, Loeb and Co.) first official reform plan, entitled "A Plan for a Modified
Central Bank," in which he outlined remedies that he thought might avert panics. Early in
1907, Jacob Schiff, the chief executive officer of Kuhn, Loeb and Co., in a speech to the New
York Chamber of Commerce, warned that "unless we have a central bank with adequate
control of credit resources, this country is going to undergo the most severe and far reaching
money panic in its history." "The Panic of 1907" hit full stride in October.

In classic Hegelian dialectic style, JP Morgan engineered the Panic of 1907 where the stock
market fell nearly 50% from its peak in 1906, the economy was in recession, and there were
numerous runs on banks and trust companies. Complete ruin of the national economy was
averted when J.P. Morgan saved the day by stepping in to organize a team of bank and trust
executives who redirected money between banks, secured further international lines of credit,
and bought plummeting stocks of healthy corporations. Morgan gained numerous holdings,
as well as his bid to be the Rothschild's number-one American agent. J.P. Morgan's real feat
and service to Rothschild in the Panic of 1907 was that he created a mood in America to
believe that a central bank would prevent such a panic from occurring again and thus became
receptive to a central bank.

Following the manufactured scare of 1907 the same bankers who created the crisis demanded
reform from Congress who established a commission of experts to come up with a
nonpartisan solution. Rhode Island Senator Nelson Aldrich, the Republican leader in the
Senate, ran the Commission personally, with the aid of his team of economists.

In 1910, Aldrich and executives representing the banks of J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and
Kuhn, Loeb, & Co., secluded themselves for 10 days at Jekyll Island, Georgia where they
wrote the primary features of the Federal Reserve Act or Glass-Owen Act, as it was
sometimes called at the time. The executives included Frank Vanderlip, president of the
National City Bank of New York, associated with the Rockefellers; Henry Davison, senior
partner of J.P. Morgan Company; Charles D. Norton, president of the First National Bank of
New York; and Col. Edward House, who would later become President Woodrow Wilson's
closest adviser and founder of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In violation of Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the Federal Reserve Act, signed
into law on December 23, 1913 by President Wilson allowed a cartel of private bankers to
create, buy the shares, and own the Federal Reserve System.

The new owners of America's treasury include the Rothschilds of London and Berlin;
Lazard Brothers of Paris; Israel Moses Seif of Italy; Kuhn, Loeb and Warburg of Germany;
and the Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs and the Rockefeller families of New York.
 The privately owned Federal Reserve Bank was granted a monoploy for
the issuance of banknotes in the USA - the Federal Reserve Note. Some
people think the Federal reserve banks are United States Government
institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private
credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for
the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and
domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money
lenders. As the Fed creates new money, it is then loaned back to the government charging
interest. The government in turn levies income taxes to pay the interest on the debt.

Coincidentally, both the Federal Reserve Act and the sixteenth amendment, which gave
congress the power to collect income taxes, were both passed in 1913. Further, the FED is the
only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from both federal and state taxes. The
FED takes in about one trillion dollars per year tax free for the benefit of the banking families
listed above. The money you pay in taxes does not go to the US Treasury to pay for the
expenses of the government. It goes to those private banking families, commonly known as
the FED, tax free.

Wilson, on his deathbed, admitted his error, saying that allowing the Federal Reserve to be
founded was a betrayal of his country.

"A great industrial nation is controlled by it's system of credit. Our system of credit is
concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of
the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world-- no longer a
government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority,
but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." -- President
Woodrow Wilson

With the outbreak of World War I, Britain was forced to abandon the gold standard and other
nations quickly followed suit. The Fed quickly issued money to help pay the costs of WWI,
as they were better positioned than the Treasury to issue war bonds, and so became the
primary retailer for war bonds under the direction of the Treasury. After the war, the Fed, led
by Paul Warburg and New York Governor Bank President Benjamin Strong, convinced
Congress to modify its powers, giving it the ability to both create and destroy money.

The Peace Dollar was the last silver dollar minted for circulation in
the United States from 1921 to 1928. Like the earlier Morgan Dollar,
it contained 90% silver, 10% copper with its silver content of
0.77344 troy oz. By 1928, the US Mint had struck enough silver
dollars to satisfy the requirements of the Pittman Act, and since
public demand for silver dollars did not materialize, the mint halted
production of the Peace Dollar that year (with fewer than two
million struck).
By this time the Federal Reserve had taken over much of the currency market, and throughout
the 1920s, they experimented with a number of approaches, alternatively creating and
destroying money and, in the eyes of many scholars (notably Milton Friedman), helping to
create the late-1920s stock market bubble. After a brief attempt to revive the gold standard
during the 1920s and the stock market crash in 1929, it was finally abandoned by Britain and
other leading nations during the Great Depression.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the Fed became subordinated to the
Executive Branch, where it remained until 1951, when the Fed and the Treasury department
signed an unconstitutional accord granting the Fed full independence over monetary matters
while leaving fiscal matters to the Treasury.

In 1933, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to declare Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the
Constitution dead and made Federal Reserve Notes, alongside Silver Certicates, legal tender
for all debts, public and private and rescinded the requirement that those notes be redeemable
in gold coin, quiety placing the U.S. on a silver standard. Now our currency was backed with
actual wealth in the form of silver, which is more plentiful than gold. Gold was re-valued
from $20/oz up to $35/oz and FDR made it illegal to own gold within the U.S. but allowed
foreigners to redeem paper dollars for gold, thus putting the U.S. in default on domestic gold
redemption.

On May 12, 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Act was passed, which included a clause
allowing for the pumping of silver into the market to replace the gold. In 1934, a law was
passed in Congress that changed the obligation on Silver Certificates so as to denote the
current location of the silver. This law also allowed the government to exchange silver
bullion for the certificates, not just silver dollars.

The Peace Dollar returned briefly in 1934 and 1935, as the government needed additional
backing for Silver Certificates. That wealth was also to be short lived.

In 1945 Congress debased the currency even further, reducing the backing to only 25 percent.
The amount of Silver Certificates in circulation depended directly upon the amount of silver
bullion in the Treasury vaults, and unless more silver could be produced, they were quickly
losing their backing and could not be recirculated. Silver Certificates began to disappear from
circulation during the 1940s and 1950s.

On June 4, 1963, President John Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 in

defiance of the Federal Reserve (Central Bank) which held a monopoly on
American currency, returning to the federal government, specifically the
Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency
without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The order
gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: "to issue silver
certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the
Treasury." As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into
circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated
and the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation. It seems
obvious to some that President Kennedy challenged the "powers that exist behind U.S. and
world finance," and his assassination was likely a warning to all future presidents not to
interfere with the private Federal Reserve's control over the creation of money.

Within days of Kennedy's assassination, the Federal Reserve issued its new notes with the
obligation clause, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is
redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank,"
replaced with only, "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."

Lawful money is any form of currency issued by the United States Treasury and not the
Federal Reserve System, including gold and silver coins, Treasury notes, and Treasury bonds.

"The terms 'lawful money' or 'lawful money of the United States' shall be construed to mean
gold and silver coin of the United States. - Title 12, U.S. Code, Section 152.

Lawful money stands in contrast to fiat money, to which the government assigns value
although it has no intrinsic value of its own and is not backed by reserves. Fiat money
includes legal tender such as paper money, checks, drafts and bank notes.

Death of the Dollar

On March 25, 1964, the Secretary of the Treasury announced that Silver Certificates would
no longer be redeemable for silver dollars. Subsequently, another act of Congress dated June
24, 1967, provided that Silver Certificates could be exchanged for silver bullion for a period
of one year, until June 24,1968. This left only fiat Federal Reserve Notes in circulation with
the government no longer obligated to give the holder of a note gold, silver, or any specific
tangible commodity in exchange for the note.

Our pre-1934 gold coins, were weighed using the decimal [dollar/cents] system. The pre-
1965 silver coins [and pre 1935 'dollar'coin] illustrates a similar harmony - except for using a
different decimal system than for measuring gold. When the government allowed the Federal
Reserve to violate the Constitutional basis of the dollar and finally divorce it from gold and
silver, the dollar ceased to exist. We still had an object we called 'dollars,' but now the unit of
measurement changed to an intangible CREDIT - no lawful money remaing in general
circulation. And, intangible credit needs no system of weights and measures. Since noTHING
is used as money - you'll notice tax, bank and sales statements often display raw numbers
[quantity symbols] only!

Silver dollars almost made a return in 1964, when Congress approved the mintage of 45
million new silver dollars to fulfill the needs of the booming casino industry in Nevada.
However, because of a critical silver shortage in 1965, Congress passed the Coinage Act of
1965, which authorized the removal of silver content from circulating coinage (except for the
Kennedy half dollar) minted after December 31, 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson issued
an order on May 15, 1965 to resume production of the Peace Dollar to include silver. 316,076
Peace Dollars were struck at the Denver mint that month, before Congress overrode the
Presidential order and demanded that production cease. All the coins produced to that point
were ordered to be melted.

From 1965 to 1969, fifty cent piece coins were debased and adulterated by reducing the silver
content to 40% silver, while in 1968 Congress repudiates redemption of all forms of "lawful
money" in silver, thus turning Federal Reserve Notes into a fiat currency domestically for the
first time.

Production of dollar coinage did resume in 1971 with the

Eisenhower Dollar. That coin, however, has no silver content. The
Eisenhower Dollar was struck with a copper-nickel composition for circulation and was the
first United States dollar coin to not be struck in a precious metal, although special collectors'
issues were struck at the San Francisco Mint in a silver-copper composition (40% silver
clad). Likewise, the Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea dollars, and Presidential dollars that have
been minted since the Eisenhower dollar contain no silver, making the Peace Dollar the last
true silver dollar struck for circulation.

When the U.S. was on a gold standard, every dollar was backed by actual wealth in the form
of gold bullion. The paper dollar was a paper promise, a contract, to pay in gold. The law
originally required that 40 percent of all federal reserve notes be backed by gold. Until 1934
the promise on our paper currency to pay "dollars" in "lawful money" meant exactly what it
said. Today we continue to use the words dollars and lawful money out of habit and custom,
and overlook that we no longer have either dollars or lawful money.

Severing it's last tie to the U.S. Constitution, the Treasury Department, on January 21, 1971
stopped issuing United States notes and none have been placed into circulation since that time
because United States notes serve no function that is not already adequately served by
Federal Reserve notes. According to the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve notes are not
redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything This
has been the case since 1933. The notes have no value for themselves, but for what they will
buy.

"All the paper money issued today is Federal Reserve notes.The real backing for the nation's
money is faith in the strength, soundness and stability of the American economy." - The Hats
the Federal Reserve Wears, FRB of Philidelphia, pg. 4

The ONLY value the American dollar has is our confidence

and belief that it does have value!
Now, our fiat paper money is totally worthless. There is nothing of real value backing it
up. The money is given value by government fiat (Latin for "let it be done") or decree,
enforced by legal tender laws forcing people to accept the fraud, in place of real money, gold
and silver. By law the refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of payment
is illegal.

Circumventing the basic law of just weights/measures allowed centralized ecomonic activity
in a state/banking 'combine' to solely determines how much money [credit] to create, for
whom, and at what cost. Natural resources [gold or silver], augmented by our own labor, no
longer determines the money supply. Banks now 'create' money [credit] out of nothing.

The very profitable venture of counterfeiting wealth has been around for a long time. The
practice of using debt as the basis for currency started in Babylon.

Simultaneous with a credit system was a need to conceal the fraud perperated by those
engaged in [theft by] principal creation. Their solution was a fee [interest] for the loan of
nothing. This solution created a mathematical dilemma, however. How does one return to a
sole source [the banks] more than they loaned into circulation? [For simplification, imagine
one bank and a total money stock of 3 eggs.] Let's say you borrow 3 eggs. When you repay
the loan, you are required to repay the principal plus interest [1 egg]. How do you repay 4
eggs on a 3 egg loan - when the banks own all the chickens? To resolve this problem [yours -
not the banks] more debtors are required to bring new 'dollars' into circulation for repayment
of interest on outstanding debts. Thus, an endless cycle of debtors and creditors is necessary
to postpone the inevitable foreclosure. Does Ponzi scheme sound appropriate?

Those banksters who issued U.S. paper money (Federal Reserve Notes) perpetrated a fraud
with the creation of paper money used to steal away gold and silver from the hands of the
people and to loot the treasury of the United States. It was, as Frederick Bastiat called in his
1850 book "The Law", legal plunder.

Another problem was created with this credit based

creation of money out of nothing. The increased
'supply' of credit depreciates as a natural
consequence, creating an insidious new tax - called
inflation.

Since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created

by Congress, your money has lost 96% of its
purchasing power due to inflation.

"Remember when gas was only 25-cents a gallon?

You could take a dollar down to the gas station and
buy four gallons for a buck! At that time our dollar
was backed by silver - real money. Guess what? That same amount of silver still buys four
gallons of gas today! That just proves that real money like gold and silver holds its value and
it is the US dollar that buys less and less. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, you
realize that gas, food, and almost everything else has NOT gotten more expensive. It only
seems that way because the value of the US dollar is worth less and less so it takes more and
more of them to buy the same goods and services. Most people think prices have gone up, but
actually: it is the value of the US dollar that has gone down." [Bernard von NotHaus, The
Liberty Dollar]

The irony of inflation is that its victims become increasingly dependent upon the very
government/banking system which confiscates their production and created the inflation. To
offset the effects of the plunder, the plunderees [public] need more assistance from the
plunderers - which further enslaves the public. As we stand on the brink of total economic
collapse, the government and Federal Reserve justifies its continued legal plunder with scare
tactics and claims that the banks "are too big to fail."

The transition from bank notes to government-guaranteed currency marks the evolution from
trust in a financial institution to trust in the economic capacity and future prosperity of the
nation. The greater a countries production and productivity, the more the goods and services
it offers in exchange for legal tender, and therefore the greater the confidence and trust in that
currency.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to
debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate,
secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." - 1980 Annual
Report Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, pg 6

The United States Government is Broke

By 1971, Nixon closed the gold window, and stopped redeeming paper money for gold, thus
turning Federal Reserve Notes into a fiat currency internationally for the first time. Gold
quickly rose in price over the next decade by an average of 34% per year, up to $850/oz.

The vaults of Fort Knox, once brimming with gold, have been looted and are now reported to
be empty. The gold has been given to the International banksters. Because of American debt,
the international money masters demanded and got our gold. It was drained through what is
called the "London Gold Pool," an agency of the world's most powerful bank, and is now
lodged deeply in the underground vaults of the Bank for International Settlements in Basil,
Switzerland.

Only a small number of U.S. congressmen are aware of the great gold scandal. Recently, this
handful of congressmen began to demand that the Federal Reserve be audited so it could be
determined what has been done with this gold and how the Federal Reserve is manipulating
our currency. The Federal Reserve has stonewalled at every turn, and the White House has
shunned all attempts to put pressure on the Federal Reserve. It is clear that the influential men
who run our money supply do not want the truth to get out.

In 1975, Americans were permitted to own real gold again. In 1980, bonds were used to lure
people away from gold. Bonds were paying a high interest rate, and a nation-wide ad
campaign was designed to get people to buy bonds instead of gold. And if you wanted gold,
you were supposed to buy the paper gold of "gold futures contracts" for the increased rate of
return. The nation was deceived and rushed back into paper money.

Hegelian Dialectic
Make no mistake about it… our current economic crisis was engineered by the same
International bankers that have been active throughout our history and that brought about a
central bank and unconstitutional taxes in the U.S.
The history of the economic crises we've experienced in America can only be understood
within a framework of the Hegelian dialectic process. Every major financial crisis America
has experienced in her history has followed this same Hegelian dialectic pattern with the
outcome being another incremental step toward world financial domination by an elite few.

The International bankers create the Problem in the first place... the Reaction is the economic
crisis... and the Solution is provided by the same people that created the problem.

Consider, for example, the global financial crisis of the early 21st century. The international
bankers of the Federal Reserve in America and abroad created the problem by making huge
amounts of money easily available to anyone with very little oversight and pushing the
perceived value of the investments made to unrepresentative highs. Federal Reserve Board
Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and SEC Chairman Arthur
Levitt vehemently opposed any regulation of financial instruments known as derivatives, and
in particular the specific kind of derivative, the mortgage-backed security, that triggered the
economic crises of 2008. While Greenspan's role as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has
been widely discussed (the main point of controversy remains the lowering of Federal funds
rate at only 1% for more than a year which, according to the Austrian School of economics,
allowed huge amounts of "easy" credit-based money to be injected into the financial system
and thus create an unsustainable economic boom.

Many libertarians, including Congressman and former 2008 Presidential candidate Ron Paul
and Peter Schiff in his book Crash Proof, predicted the crisis prior to its occurrence. They are
critical of theories that the free market caused the crisis and instead argue that the Federal
Reserve's printing of money out of thin air and the Community Reinvestment Act are the
primary causes of the crisis.

As the true values of investments became apparent, investors rushed to cover their loses
causing what was for all practical purposes a run on the bank resulting in home foreclosures
and bank failures. In February 2008, Reuters reported that global inflation was at historic
levels, and that domestic inflation was at 10-20 year highs for many nations. Next came the
reaction of the marketplace contracting with stock market declines, massive job layoffs and
impending business failures. This led to the rising sentiment that something needed to be
done to prevent a total economic collapse and to save institutions too big to fail. Coming to
the rescue was the same international bankers of the Federal Reserve that caused the problem
in the first place with their solution. Economic stimulus plans were announced and bailouts
of failing or threatened businesses were carried out. Taxpayers were called upon to pony up
with their wealth to "bailout" or "rescue" those same banks, allowing the bigger banks to
consolidate their power even further buying up the smaller banks.

The crisis continues even after transferring trillions of dollars into the hands of the
international bankers of the worlds central banks. The response of those who created and
perpetrate the problem is more economic stimulus, what Texas Congressman Ron Paul said
would be akin to pouring kerosene on an already raging fire. He warns that such measures
will cause a recession to turn into a full scale depression possibly worse than that of the
1930s.

You can't overlook the possibility another reason the crisis continues is because there might
be an ever larger agenda here. Perhaps we haven't yet identified an even more sinister
problem-reaction-soluction scenario.
Should an oil embargo ensue, product scarcities will cause frenzy buying of food and fuel,
gold prices will spike, the dollar will crash and global panic will most likely break out.

Given the growing influence of collectivist politicians here and abroad, a likely scenario is
the globalization of world financial markets and the merging of soverign nations into larger
global entities. In the final quarter of 2008, the financial crisis saw the G-20 group of major
economies assume a new significance, suggesting a new economic order including a global
currency.

Steven Watson, writing for Infowars, said: The decline of the economy in the US is being
caused by the very predatory globalist policies that are still presented to us as the solution for
economic turmoil. Globalist vampires such as the IMFand the World bank, but two of the
elite central banks and private interests, have drained the third world dry, and are now
focusing their attention on enslaving the developed world.

The single currency and a ‘new economic order’ is a major step on the road to global
governance. Europe already has its own strong single currency, while the dollar’s days seem
to be numbered. When money is being printed and distributed by private corporations is it
any surprise to see a push for a merger with other countries’ currencies?

There is yet one remaining consistent piece of the puzzle yet to emerge in our current crisis.
In all previous financial crises, a state of war was always associated with the process. Besides
the ongoing war in Iraq and Afganistan, could there be an impending war to bring us out of
the current economic mess? According to forcaster, author, and CEO of The Trends Research
Institute, Gerald Celente, an attack on Iran by either Israel or the US will spark the onset of
World War III.

The Boom - Bust Cycle

Are you beginning to understand the game banksters play to consolidate the wealth into their
pockets?

"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they
create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code
that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat in "The Law"

The central bank causes inflation by creating debt/money for loans and credit and making
these funds readily available... setting up the booming economy. They next use the inflation
which they created as an excuse to shut off the loans/credit/money. The resulting shortage of
cash causes the economy to falter or slow dramatically - or bust - and large numbers of
business and personal bankruptcies result. The central bank then seizes the assets used as
security for the loans and the wealth created by the borrowers during the boom is then
transferred to the central bank during the bust. That's how the rich get richer, and the poor get
poorer.

In 2008, America was faced once again with another financial crisis. And, like in previous
crises, it was engineered by the same International bankster elites that have sought to set
themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their
fancy. Easy and low cost credit created by artificially manipulated interest rates by the Fed
encouraged a real estate boom (the problem). Once unsustainable levels of investments were
reached, the values of those investments were debased leading to a contraction of credit,
widespread foreclosures, and runs on the banks (the reaction). And, like in previous crises,
the International banksters provided the solution... government bailouts of trillions of dollars
of taxpayer money into the coffers of financial institutions "too big to fail."

“There’s no doubt now, that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s plan to pump zillions of dollars
into the system via ‘low interest rates’ has created the biggest monster-bubble of all time and
set the stage for a deep economic retrenchment,” writes Mike Whitney. “ Greenspan’s
inflationary policies were designed to expand the ‘wealth gap’ and create greater economic
polarization between the classes. By the time the housing bubble deflates, millions of
working class Americans will be left to pay off loans that are considerably higher than the
current value of their home. This will inevitably create deeper societal divisions and, very
likely, a permanent underclass of mortgage-slaves.”

Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels
between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking. Just
as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks “on margin”, so
too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both
cases the “wealth effect” spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really
the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods
wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing
more extreme by the year.

"...The borrower is servant to the lender." - Proverbs 22:7

As a result of allowing International bankers to dismantle our Constitution and devolve our
monetary system from commodity money, to fiduciary money, and now to fiat money...
Americans have once again become slave to the lenders and absent massive transfers of
wealth from working Americans, their ponzi scheme is on the brink of collapse.

• The government operates a scheme of oppressive, hidden taxation through increases in the
supply of money that generate systematic increases in the prices of goods and services
(what the public calls "inflation").
• Through this system of hidden taxation, modern political money licenses the dominant
financial and political oligarchy of this country to "Redistribute" the nation's wealth from
one group to another - more than $6 trillion since World War II, according to the American
Institute for Economic Research.
• The banking system now own the trust companies, investment dealers, stock brokers, and
bond brokers and more, as the little people are bankrupted, put under power of sale, and
rot unemployed while the stores are packed with goods.
• By functioning as a mechanism for "redistributing" wealth, modern political money
systematically corrupts the electoral process, enabling politicians to buy votes with
promises of new or expanded governmental spending-programs made possible only by the
banking system's ability to "monetize" the public debt.
• By linking the corrupt banking system to the public debt, modern political money licenses
the banksters to loot the public treasury, initially by guaranteeing Federal Reserve Notes as
"obligations of the United States" and specially privileging those notes as "legal tender", and
ultimately by providing taxpayer-funded "bail outs" of the bankers when the scheme of
inherently fraudulent fractional-reserve banking collapses.
 • Modern political money and political banking function as key mechanisms in the New World
Order scheme of fascistic central economic planning that misdirects and wastes resources
and thereby lowers the standard of living of the vast mass of Americans for the benefit of a
privileged few.

"Whenever a government assumes the power of discriminating between the different classes
of the community, it becomes, in effect, the arbiter of their prosperity and exercises a power
not contemplated by any intelligent people in delegating their sovereignty to their rulers. It
then becomes the great regulator of the profits of every species of industry and reduces men
from a dependence on their own exertions to a dependence of the caprices of their
government." [Ron Paul, "The Revolution: A Manifesto"]

How long can this CONfidence-game last?

Not forever!

How is the fraud sustained and public CONfindence maintained?

"Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money
(credits) becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed." -- John Maynard
Keynes, "Consequences of Peace."

• Banks charge interest on their loans to give the Federal Reserve Notes the perception of
value.
• They count on the short residual memory of the older generation to remember the days
when gold and silver certificates circulated at par with precious metals.
• They dumb-down the public with government sponsored public schools where students
never learn the truth about money and where students learn to exchange labor and
production [assets] for checks and banknotes [liabilities] created out of nothing in a
government protected bank.
• The corporate owned mainstream media keeps the public distracted with an endless stream
of nonsensical entertainment and news presented by well trained propagandists. When was
the last time you heard a newscaster or pundit report anything that made sense?
• Confidence in 'credit' is also produced by taxation. Governments go to great lengths
collecting far less of 'it' than they spend - to sustain an aura of value. In fact, government
does not NEED to collect taxes to pay for services as it can simply print all the bank notes it
needs.

"If, on the one hand, the banks overly expand credit, hyperinflation occurs. If, on the other
hand, the banks overly restrict the expansion of credit in order to avoid hyperinflation,
recession and then depression occurs. The bankers' "trick" is to continue to expand credit
within an expanding, and therefore essentially noninflationary, economy. The insoluble
problem inherent in credit-expansion through fractional-reserve banking, however, is that
expansion of a fiat money supply inevitably misdirects and wastes real economic resources,
resulting in an increasingly nonrational economy - that is an economy that does not expand in
real terms. In short, credit-expansion by fractional-reserve banking in the long run guarantees
economic collapse, with resultant social chaos and political crisis.

The burden of governmental debt - much of it made possible only by central-bank

"monetization" - has approached levels unsustainable in real terms even with drastically
increased confiscation of Americans' earnings through explicit taxation. But Americans seem
reluctant to accept more taxation to fund the never-ending follies of a spendthrift welfare
state. Thus, repudiation of the debt (in whole or in part) through extreme depreciation of
Federal Reserve Notes and bank-deposits denominated therein appears likely, if not certain."
[Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., "The Federal Reserve System: A Fatal Parasite on the American body
Politic."]

Return to Constitutional "Real" Money

The Bible is very clear that the type of medium of exchange we are to be using is not
worthless paper. We can continue to follow "man's" way and receive the curses, or we can do
things God's way, and receive the blessings. We are presently being led down a path to our
own destruction, and until we begin to see money as a Scriptural, moral issue, we will
continue to live in bondage.

We do have a choice, and ultimately, it's a moral choice. Choose bondage or choose liberty.

Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not
receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered
her crimes. - Revelation 18:4-5

If we as a nation are to avoid economic collapse and begin to enjoy the vision of our
founders, we must...

• Restore America's original constitutional monetary system of silver and gold coinage. The US
Constitution has never been amended to allow anyone other than Congress to coin and
regulate currency.
• Insist we return to an honest system of weights and measures.
• Demand that all the paper currencies of private banks be true fiduciary monies - that is, be
redeemable in silver or gold, or some other commodity with intrinsic value.
• Repeal the unconstitutional legal tender laws forcing citizens to accept worthless paper
money as payment and resume the practice of using lawful money (gold and silver) as the
only legal tender currency.
• Dismantle the incestuous and corrupt relationship between the national government and
the banking industry through the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation, and so on.
• Abolish inherently fraudulent fractional-reserve banking.
• End the government's use of the monetary and banking systems to "regulate" the economy
and to impose pervasive police-state surveillance on individuals.

Individually, we can begin to take more responsibility for our own economic future.

• Stop immediately incurring new debt. If you're now in debt, get out.
• While we still can... we should be buying physical gold and silver as the storehouse of our
wealth. While not being real Constitutional money, owning gold & silver bullion represents
the most universally trusted form of savings because gold & silver continue to be the most
widely recognized form of money. Unlike fiat currency and some stock market investments,
gold and silver will never lose ALL its value.

The American Silver Eagle is the official silver bullion coin of the
United States, first released by the United States Mint on November
24, 1986. American Eagle Silver bullion coins are affordable
investments and legal tender with a nominal face value of one dollar.
Above all, they're the only silver bullion coins whose 1 troy oz. weight and 99.9% pure silver
purity are guaranteed by the United States Government. They're also the only silver coins
allowed in an IRA.

The American Gold Eagle is an official gold bullion coin of the

United States, authorized under the Gold Bullion Coin Act of 1985,
and first released by the United States Mint in 1986. Offered in 1/10
oz, 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz, and 1 oz denominations, these coins are
guaranteed by the U.S. government to contain the stated amount of
actual gold weight in troy ounces. These coins are made with gold
from sources in America, with an additional alloy of silver and
copper to produce a more wear-resistant coin of .9167 (22 karat,
which had long been the crown gold English standard for gold
coins).

The American Buffalo, also known as a Gold Buffalo, is a 24-karat

gold bullion coin first offered for sale by the United States Mint
on June 22, 2006. This was the first time ever that the United
States Government has minted pure (.9999) 24-karat gold coins for
the public. On September 26, 2008 the U.S. Mint
announced it is temporarily halting sales of the American
Buffalo coins because it can't keep up with soaring demand as
investors seek the safety of gold amid the current economic
turbulence.

First minted in 1988, the silver Maple Leaf is now one of the
more popular members of the Canadian Maple Leaf family of
bullion coins...besides silver, one-ounce Maple Leaf coins are also
produced by the Royal Canadian Mint in gold, platinum and
palladium. The silver Maple Leaf coin contains one troy ounce of
pure .9999 fine (or "four-nines") silver, making it the purest one-
ounce silver coin produced by any government mint anywhere in
the world, and is a legal tender coin with a face value of five
Canadian dollars.

The 800-year old Austrian Mint first minted the

Silver Vienna Philharmonics in 2008, and are
pure .999 fine silver bullion coins each
containing one troy ounce of pure silver.

The market value of the coins is generally about

equal to the market value of their gold or silver
content, not their face value.

The day may not be far off where the fiat currency we now use as a medium of exchange will
become so devalued through hyperinflation, it will take cartloads of it to purchase basic
necessities. History tells us that since the Roman Empire every currency has been inflated
into non-existence, a valuation of zero. All world currencies will suffer the same fate
eventually.
Right now, the U.S. government is printing away your wealth through inflation. As they
continue to increase the money supply and hand it over to banks and failed investment
schemes, the value of each of your paper dollars decreases. The last M3 reports showed that
18% more dollars were being printed yearly by the Federal Reserve. They have since stopped
publishing M3 figures so we have no idea how bad it's gotten in the last few years.